Historically videos have been provided to consumers by very large media organizations, and consumer choices have been limited to watching the videos offered by those media organizations or turning off the television. Today, with the emergence of online video sharing and social networking websites, the manner in which people consume videos has fundamentally changed. Instead of passively watching videos that are selected, created, and distributed by a media organization, such as a television network, users have the ability to choose and watch videos that are selected from among a much larger and broader set of video content. However, the sheer volume of available videos often makes it difficult for users to decide what videos to watch.
Accordingly, people have increasingly relied on their social networks to help them find interesting videos to watch. This sharing of videos through web sites, blogs, email, and other means has given rise to a new phenomenon—that of viral videos. Unlike traditional videos, a viral video's success is not dependent on the size of the company behind the video or the amount of money spent on the video's promotion. Rather, a viral video's success is dependent on the users that share the video with others. Accordingly, prediction of viral videos is difficult due to the nature of discovery of videos that become viral.